A wide variety of medical procedures require placement of medical devices at various locations within a patient's body. For instance, certain procedures may require the placement of electrodes within a patient's spine, or attachment of electrodes to heart tissue, or the like. In other procedures, medical staff may wish to place temperature probes or heating wires at various locations within patient's body. Further, for cancer treatment, medical staff may wish to place radioactive seeds or deliver therapeutic medications deep within a patient's body, including directly into internal organs. In still other procedures, medical staff may wish to place catheters or other fluid or material-carrying conduits within the patient's body for delivery of medications or other materials, for carrying forceps, biopsy instruments or the like into the patient's body, for providing suctioning to various parts of a patient's body, and many other procedures involving the placement of medical devices within the patient's body. Procedures for placing such medical devices vary widely from application to application, but all carry the common aspect of presenting challenge to the medical staff in manipulating such medical devices within the patient's body to route them to their intended location and position them for their intended use at that location.
More particularly, often times medical procedures require manipulation of a catheter or other conduit through portions of the patient's body that are not easily accessible, and thus make maneuvering of the conduit to its intended location quite challenging. For instance, it may be medically necessary to place conduits within internal body cavities to provide for the drainage of unwanted fluid, to provide for the infusion of medications into internal organs or elsewhere in the body, to provide for direct nutritional supplementation to patients unable to orally consume adequate nutrition, and the like. The procedures for guiding such conduits to their intended locations in a patient's body can be difficult to perform and can risk serious injury to the patient if not performed properly.
One such procedure that presents significant challenges is the placement of gastrostomy tubes for patients requiring direct nutritional supplementation into the stomach. Enteral feeding has been recommended when a patient has a functioning gut but is unable to eat for seven to fourteen days. When enteral feeding is anticipated to be required for longer than 30 days, a gastrostomy tube is preferred over a nasoenteric tube. The placement of gastronomy tubes has become a frequently required procedure, with more than 215,000 being placed annually in the United States. The vast majority of such procedures are performed by consultants, such as gastroenterologists and interventional radiologists, as opposed to an emergency room doctor, an intensivist, or patient's primary physician. This is because those specialized consultant physicians have access to and have been trained on the expensive equipment that one must use to safely enter (i.e., cannulate) the stomach (i.e., gastrostomy). This expensive equipment includes endoscopes, fluoroscopes, and computed tomography (CT) scanners, all of which require specialized training and skill to operate properly.
The most common method for initial gastrostomy tube insertion is Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (“PEG”), involving placing of a PEG tube into the patient's stomach. When performing a typical PEG process, a patient is placed in the supine position. A nasal or oral gastric tube is then introduced into the patient's stomach. Gastric fluid is removed using suction, such as through fenestrations at the distal end of the nasal or oral gastric tube. The stomach is then insufflated by way of the gastric tube or an endoscope. In one method, the endoscope has a light at the distal end. When illuminated, the practitioner is supposed to identify a suitable puncture site that is free from interposed organs and large vessels by noting where the light from the endoscope shines through the abdominal skin of the patient. An incision is then made at the identified target site, and a sheathed needle is then entered into the insufflated stomach. A guide wire is then introduced through the abdominal sheath and into the stomach. A snare or forceps located at the distal end of the endoscope is manipulated to capture the end of the guide wire. The endoscope is then extracted, pulling the guide wire along and ultimately causing the guide wire to exit through the mouth or nose. Applicant is aware of two preferred methods to complete the gastrostomy after the guide wire has been routed from the outside of the patient's abdomen, into their stomach, up their esophagus and out through their mouth or nose: the Ponsky-Gauderer (pull-(on) string) method (the “PG method”), and the Sacks-Vine (push-over-wire) method (the “SV method”).
If the PG method is selected, the gastrostomy tube is tied to the end of the guide wire that has exited through the patient's nose or mouth. The abdominal end of the guide wire is then pulled until the gastrostomy tube extends out from the hole in the abdomen, with the proximal end of the gastrostomy tube (having an enlarged end, or bumper, therein to prevent it from passing through the stomach wall and out of the patient's abdomen) remaining within and providing access to the interior of the patient's stomach. If the SV method is selected, the gastrostomy tube is placed over the guide wire and is pushed toward the stomach from the patient's mouth until it extends out from the abdominal hole. Again, the gastrostomy tube has a bumper to prevent the tube from passing entirely through the abdominal hole and causing the proximal end to remain in the stomach.
Alternatively, percutaneous gastrostomy placement can be performed using gastropexy methods. Gastropexy wires are inserted into the stomach via the angiocatheter and used to tether the stomach. Standard gastropexy techniques are then used to place the gastrostomy tube over a guide wire inserted only within the stomach.
Even with skilled consultant physicians handling these procedures, complications can occur including tube misplacement, inadvertent injury to surrounding tissues during placement, infections, tube clogging, and tube dislodgement during use. When such complications occur outside of the hospital, patients will often come to a hospital emergency room for help. However, as the PEG procedures require specialized skill in handling, emergency medicine physicians are often unable to perform the necessary procedures, and must instead call upon such specialist consultants, which adds to the overall expense and delay in treating the patient's issue, or risk of further complication or injury if someone lacking sufficient specialized skill attempts to address the issue.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a device and method that will allow for placement of a medical device into a patient's body, such as the performance of percutaneous gastrostomies, at the bedside and that will no longer require the expertise and equipment of specialist medical personnel, such as a gastroenterologist or other specialist. It would be advantageous to provide a method and device that would reduce the difficulties associated with installing medical devices inside of a patient's body, including medical instrument carriers, medication carriers, electrodes, probes, catheters and other conduits, and that would thereby reduce the risks of injury associated with previously known methods and devices.